Category: Uncategorized

Moss for DC Journal: Antitrust Immunity for the NCAA? That’s a Foul

Posted on by Alex Terr

If a billion-dollar organization breaks the law, should Congress reward it with immunity from the antitrust laws? The NCAA and some lawmakers seem to think so, and the recently introduced House bill — The Student Compensation and Opportunity through Rights and Endorsements Act (‘‘SCORE Act”) — does just this.

College sports are at a crossroads. Student-athletes have only recently gained the right to earn money from their name, image and likeness (NIL). Just as this progress gains steam, Congress may undermine it by granting the NCAA a sweeping exemption from antitrust law.

Buried in the SCORE Act legislation is a clause that would make “compliance” with it broadly immune from enforcement of federal antitrust law and any state law or rules that have the same effect, no matter how anti-competitive its rules may be.

Read more in DC Journal. 

Republicans Missed a Perfect Opportunity to Cut Wasteful Spending in Medicare

Posted on by Alyssa Brown

Republicans are congratulating themselves for “cutting wasteful spending” after ramming through a partisan bill to rescind $9 billion of funding for foreign aid and public broadcasting. Yet just last month, they walked away from a bipartisan proposal to save more than 60 times that amount over 10 years by curtailing overpayments to privately-run Medicare Advantage plans in their reconciliation bill. 

Republicans seem afraid to make any changes to politically popular programs like Medicare, even when they’re targeting obvious waste and abuse. By refusing to tackle wasteful spending in Medicare Advantage, they missed a perfect opportunity to enact bipartisan reforms that would strengthen Medicare’s financial footing and fix a broken incentive structure that prevents Medicare Advantage from delivering on its promise. 

Congress created Medicare Advantage in 1997 to give seniors the option to receive their Medicare benefits from private insurers rather than the federal government. In addition to expanding choice and competition in health care, Medicare Advantage was designed to save money for Medicare by rewarding insurers for containing costs. Under the system, private plans submit “bids” estimating the cost of covering a typical senior. Plans that bid below a benchmark, based on traditional Medicare’s per-person spending, receive part of the difference as a rebate. Payments to plans are also adjusted for each enrollee’s risk score based on their health history to compensate plans for covering sicker, more expensive patients.

Medicare Advantage had enormous potential to reduce Medicare’s costs. Traditional Medicare overpays for many services, and its fee-for-service payment structure incentivizes providers to perform unnecessary procedures in order to increase reimbursements. Introducing private competition into this market could have improved efficiency and driven down costs. But this cost-saving potential has been undermined by unscrupulous insurers who focus on manipulating the system to boost profits, rather than delivering high-value care. The most brazen tactic these insurers use is upcoding — inflating enrollees’ risk scores to make them appear sicker than they really are.

In recent years, insurance companies have found new ways to increase enrollees’ risk scores. They reward patients for completing health risk assessments with company-employed providers, which often lead to questionable new diagnoses. They also comb through patients’ medical records in chart reviews to look for diagnoses that doctors never reported. These tactics have helped insurers raise risk scores by an average of 16% compared to similar patients in traditional Medicare. Medicare applies a 5.9% coding intensity adjustment to partially offset this effect, but upcoding is still projected to cause $600 billion in overpayments to Medicare Advantage insurers over the next ten years. 

Some Senate Republicans hoped to fix this problem by including language from the bipartisan No UPCODE Act in their reconciliation bill. This legislation would block insurers from inflating risk scores with diagnoses from health risk assessments or chart reviews, unless diagnoses are also confirmed in a medical setting. It would also modify the risk adjustment formula to increase parity with traditional Medicare. Most crucially, the act would require Medicare to update the coding intensity adjustment every year to account for the full effect of upcoding.

During negotiations, several Republican senators floated these reforms as a way to help offset the cost of their reconciliation package. But some GOP lawmakers in vulnerable districts pushed back, worried that any measure to reduce Medicare spending could be framed as a politically toxic cut to benefits. President Trump weighed in as well, reportedly telling a Senator that “people who play around with Medicare lose elections.” So just days later, these reforms were dropped from consideration, and Republicans put even more of their “One Big Beautiful Bill” on the nation’s credit card.

But in reality, continuing the current system of Medicare Advantage overpayments will itself lead to benefit cuts by draining Medicare’s resources at a time when the program can least afford it. Medicare’s total spending is projected to grow by nearly 8% per year over the next decade, driven by rising health care costs and an aging population. Without intervention, Medicare’s Hospital Insurance trust fund is projected to become insolvent by 2033, triggering an automatic 11% cut in payments. Medicare’s outpatient spending is growing even faster, pushing up premiums for beneficiaries and increasing the financial burden on taxpayers. 

Adopting upcoding reform would save roughly $600 billion over 10 years, closing nearly half of the Hospital Insurance trust fund’s shortfall in the process. And if lawmakers went even further to tackle all the other sources of Medicare Advantage overpayments, they could roughly double their savings to $1.2 trillion. These savings could allow lawmakers to avoid making cuts to Medicare benefits in the future — that’s why the AARP endorsed the No UPCODE Act last week.

Medicare Advantage, despite its flaws, has many benefits. Seniors should have the freedom to choose the plan that best meets their needs, and genuine competition among insurers could drive them to deliver efficient and high-quality care. But in order to unlock this potential, lawmakers must pass reforms that would force insurers to compete by offering high-value plans — rather than competing to extract the largest possible overpayments.

Weinstein Jr. for Forbes: 5 Reasons Trump Should Think Twice About Firing Fed Chair Jerome Powell

Posted on by Alex Terr

It’s no secret that Donald Trump does not like how Jerome Powell is managing the Fed and monetary policy. Despite nominating Powell for the job of Fed Chair in 2017, the President lambasts Powell (who Trump has nicknamed Mr. Too Late) every time the Fed’s Federal Open Markets Committee meets and doesn’t cut interest rates.

But President Trump should think again if he believes getting rid of Powell will get him what he wants. While the president is desperate for the Fed to cut interest rates, firing Powell before his term ends in eight months is no guarantee that rates would drop, and his departure would also likely rattle the financial markets.

Read more in Forbes.

American shipyards are building three of the 5,448 large commercial vessels on order worldwide

Posted on by Alex Terr

FACT: American shipyards are building three of the 5,448 large commercial vessels on order worldwide.

THE NUMBERS: Major commercial vessels on order, 2024* –

WORLD 5,448
China 3,419
Korea    710
Japan    668
European Union    197
United States        3
All others    451

* BRS Shipbrokers 2025 Annual Review

WHAT THEY MEAN: 

Ecclesiastes 1:9: “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and this which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.” 

The Biden administration’s signature economic plan — “industrial strategy” to rejuvenate aging industries or create new ones — tried to use loans, tax credits, and regulations to ramp up semiconductor chip production and build electric vehicles, battery factories, and low-emission power plants. Its authors achieved less than they hoped. A big reason was their addition of extra costs and qualification hurdles related to different priorities — especially the expensive “Buy American” mandates, but also hiring guidelines, child-care rules, etc. — to the core “more chip-making” and “low-carbon future” goals. This meant industrial-strategy projects cost more, arrived later, had less real-world impact, and wound up more associated in the public mind with spending and higher prices than industry and jobs.

“The thing that hath been done, it is that which shall be.” This spring, the Trump administration adopted the last Biden-era program — an effort to use fees on arriving Chinese-built or Chinese-owned/operated ships to subsidize creation of a U.S. commercial shipbuilding industry. They’re also repeating the Biden team’s extra-cost mistake: Mr. Trump’s obsession with tariffs, especially on metals, suggests that though the shipbuilding program will raise costs for Americans, it won’t launch many ships. Background:

The hope of the chip and EV programs was to enlarge, and partially reshape, large existing industries with lots of capacity, skilled workers, and engineering talent. Reviving commercial shipbuilding is a bigger job. It’s been 70 years since American shipyards built many cargo vessels — the U.S. share of world commercial shipbuilding was only around 2% in the 1960s and 1970s, and has been under 1% since the late 1980s. The current data:

1. Vessel orders: BRS Shipbrokers’ annual review reports 5,448 large cargo vessels on order worldwide in 2024. These are the container ships, tankers, ro/ros, grain carriers, etc. that will carry the world’s cargoes in the 2030s. Chinese yards are making 3,419 of them, while Japan and Korea combine for 1,378. EU countries are building 197; Vietnam, India, Turkey, and the Philippines do most of the rest. The U.S.’ count was an inglorious “three”.

2. Vessel costs: U.S.-built cargo vessels are also expensive. The three 3,620-TEU (i.e., 3,620 twenty-foot containers) Aloha-class container ships under construction at the Philly Yard, destined for domestic Jones Act transport rather than “blue water” intercontinental cargoes, cost about $330 million each. By comparison, the 32 giant container ships Maersk reportedly contracted last year to buy from Korea’s Hanwha Ocean — 22,000 TEU to 24,000 TEU apiece, six times Aloha-class capacity — cost about $272 million each. (Comical asterisk: Hanwha bought the Philly Yard last December, and presumably inherits the Aloha-class contract.)

Given how few commercial ships Americans now build and how much they cost, this industrial-strategy project looks, well, challenging. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible, though, and in an era of alarming naval competition, the idea has strategic appeal. But it at minimum needs enough money to:

(a) Purchase land and offer construction contracts to build shipyards able to assemble much larger ships.
(b) Recruit tens of thousands of specialized engineers, welders, and other workers.
(c) Drastically cut the price of U.S.-made ships, so yards could sell them to big international maritime companies as well as small captive-market Jones Act carriers.
(d) Perhaps underwrite some sort of technological leap, rethinking ship-construction methods altogether through advanced AI design, which might, maybe, possibly, help turn the U.S.’ lack of a big incumbent shipbuilder into a “first-mover” advantage.

Now to the fees. They result from a “Section 301” unfair trade petition filed in 2024 by a labor union group, arguing that Chinese subsidies since 2000 had damaged U.S. shipbuilding. The premise is intellectually shaky — U.S. yards were building just two commercial vessels in 2000 – but the Biden administration approved it, and the Trump administration uses it as the legal basis for fees that, barring some change in plan, by April 2028 will reach:

  • $140 per net ton [note: a measurement of cargo capacity] for Chinese-owned or -operated ships.
  • $33 per net ton or $250 per off-loaded container, whichever is higher, for Chinese-built container ships with capacity above 4,000 TEU.
  • $14 per net ton for automobile carriers [note: perhaps legally vulnerable, as it covers all ro/ros made outside the U.S., not only those made or operated by Chinese firms].

Outside the shipbuilding world, the fees will mean new costs. At face value, the fee for unloading 10,000 containers from a Chinese-built container ship operated by a non-Chinese company looks like $2.5 million, and for similar vessels owned by Chinese or Hong Kong carriers, about $10.5 million. As shipping firms incorporate these costs into their cargo charges, prices would rise for both incoming consumer goods and factory or farm inputs (half of all container traffic). American seaports would lose some business, harming local and hinterland economies and reducing U.S. trucking and rail employment. And with fewer vessel calls, especially at smaller ports, exporters, too — especially western-state farmers — would have fewer choices among carriers and higher cargo charges, probably losing some overseas sales. (Exports are 20% of U.S. farm income.) Overall, one analyst this spring estimated, assuming average cost of $1 million per port call, that the fees might reduce U.S. GDP by 0.24% (about $72 billion), with the largest drops in farm income.

They probably won’t, though, bring in enough money for an industrial-strategy project this big. Where the Congressional appropriations and tax breaks for chip and EV production were large and predictable, vessel-call fee revenue would be uncertain and volatile. Importers and shipping firms (at least big ones which own lots of ships) can, after, shift vessel arrival patterns to reduce cost: use non-Chinese ships for American ports when possible; employ small ships exempt from fees more often; drop off Chinese-carried cargos in Mexico or Canada for land transport; centralize calls at very big American ports; bypass smaller ports.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has adopted the Biden team’s characteristic error as well as its industrial-strategy concept. Fees or not, a different policy — higher tariffs, especially on metals — will likely scuttle their core ship-building goal.

Large ocean vessels, after all, are made of metal. Even relatively small Aloha-class container ships use about 14,000 tons of steel. Really big ones like Maersk’s 24,000-TEU EEE-class fleet — 399 meters from stern to bow, as long as an ultra-tall skyscraper is high — are colorfully said to use “eight Eiffel Towers” worth of steel, which would be around 55,000 tons. As a micro-illustration, each link in their anchor chains weighs almost 500 pounds. And even before Mr. Trump’s abrupt June steel-tariff hike (from an already very heavy 25% to 50%), U.S. prices were high. According to the Commerce Department, this spring’s average steel prices were:

U.S. $984/ton
Europe $660/ton
World $440/ton
China $392/ton

 

In short, American shipbuilders pay twice as much as their Japanese or Korean competitors for steel. That’s an extra $30 million for even one big ship. The new 50% rate will add millions more. So will similar aluminum and copper tariffs. So will the administration’s 10% “baseline” and higher “reciprocal” tariffs on paint, wiring, telecom equipment, and other inputs, should they survive court scrutiny this summer. No foreign shipbuilder pays anything like this.

So: Creating a big U.S. commercial shipbuilding industry from near-scratch looks hard and
expensive under any circumstances. That doesn’t necessarily make it hopeless. But trying to create one, while also using tariffs to make U.S.-built ships even more expensive and harder to sell, is probably impossible. Ecclesiastes gets the mordant last word on the usually futile, and often endless, way public money flows into such “subsidies plus mandated cost increases” programs: “All the rivers run to the sea; yet the sea is not full.”

FURTHER READING

PPI’s four principles for response to tariffs and economic isolationism:

  • Defend the Constitution and oppose rule by decree;
  • Connect tariff policy to growth, work, prices and family budgets, and living standards;
  • Stand by America’s neighbors and allies;
  • Offer a positive alternative.

BRS Shipbrokers’ 2025 Annual Review has shipping orders by country and ship type as of
2024.
… or direct to the interactive version.

U.S. policy –

The White House’s maritime strategy.
The U.S. Trade Representative Office outlines its new shipping fees.
The “Section 301” petition soliciting them, filed by four unions and the AFL-CIO’s Maritime
Trades Department.
… and apposite verses from Ecclesiastes (KJV).

Commentary:
Farm Bureau on potential harm to U.S. farm exports.
World Shipping Council views on costs and unintended consequences.

U.S. shipbuilding:
A gloomy 2023 Congressional Research Service look at U.S. shipbuilding.
… and the near-identical 2002 outlook from the Center for Naval Analysis.
The backstory from engineering/construction blogger Brian Potter. TL/DR: 19th century wooden-
ship golden age, early 20th-century fall, brief WWII revival, stasis since.
The Commerce Department reports on steel prices.
The Hanwha Philly Shipyard.
And Jones Act carrier Matson describes Aloha-class container vessels.

Abroad:
UNCTAD’s Review of Maritime Transport examines the world’s commercial shipping fleets.
Maersk explains ocean-shipping services.
Japan’s Imabari Shipbuilding Ltd.
And CSIS analysts Matthew Funaoile, Brian Hart, and Aidan Powers-Riggs on China’s dual-use shipbuilding empire.

ABOUT ED

Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.

Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.

Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.

Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.

Read the full email and sign up for the Trade Fact of the Week.

Jacoby on Washington Monthly ‘Politics Roundtable’ podcast: Trump Turns on Putin

Posted on by Alex Terr

After years of slavish fawning over Vladimir Putin, President Donald Trump has apparently made an abrupt about-face in his views on the Russian President. In the last week, he has threatened huge tariffs on Russia’s trading partners if Putin didn’t agree to a ceasefire; he’s also restarted the flow of arms to Ukraine via third-party transactions with European allies. But will his resolve on Ukraine hold?

Contributing writer Tamar Jacoby, Director of the New Ukraine Project for the Progressive Policy Institute, joined Editor in Chief Paul Glastris, Politics Editor Bill Scher, Exective Editor for Digital Matt Cooper and moderator Anne Kim for this week’s episode of the Washington Monthly Politics Roundtable.  They also discuss Jeffrey Epstein drama and the Rescissions battle in Congress.

Listen to the full interview. 

Marshall in The New York Times: The Seeds of Democratic Revival Have Already Been Sown

Posted on by Max Sherrill

We encountered more emphasis from the left than the center on countering corporate power. Centrists, by contrast, emphasized reforming the government itself (…)

Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, a moderate think tank, put it this way: Democrats “need to get serious about reinventing government again. One big reason Bidenomics didn’t land with working families is that they don’t think the federal government works for their benefit or can deliver on its promises. By reflexively defending underperforming public institutions — from public schools to ossified federal agencies — Democrats only cement their identification with a broken status quo.”

Read the full article in The New York Times.

Ainsley for ABC Radio National Breakfast: UK’s Labour Party suspends four MPs in rising rebellion over welfare policy

Posted on by Max Sherrill

As British Prime Minister tries to reassert control of his party room, four rebel Labour MPs have been suspended after voting against the government’s welfare reform bill earlier this month.

Keir Starmer has defended the decision, which follows an earlier back-flip on key welfare measures in the wake of ongoing pressure from Labour MPs.

Critics say the suspensions could deepen divisions in the party and spark further unrest on Labour’s left.

  • Guest: Claire Ainsley, Former Director of Policy to Keir Starmer, now Director of the Project on Center-Left Renewal at the Progressive Policy Institute

Listen to the full interview.

Jacoby for Washington Monthly: Dramatic Shift in Trump’s Thinking About the Russia-Ukraine War

Posted on by Alex Terr

The Russian reaction wasn’t long in coming. Just hours after President Donald Trump met with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in the Oval Office on Monday to announce new missiles for Ukraine and 100 percent tariffs on Russia if the two countries can’t agree to a ceasefire in 50 days, the Moscow Stock Exchange Index rose sharply. Russian investors, expecting worse from Washington, were apparently relieved by the outcome of the meeting.

Later that day, Senator Konstantin Kosachev, chair of the foreign affairs committee in the Russian parliament’s upper house, dismissed the news from the White House as “much ado about nothing.” “Over 50 days, a whole lot can change on the battlefield,” he wrote menacingly on social media, “and in the moods of those in power in the U.S. and NATO. But our mood won’t be affected.”

The Oval Office announcement signals a dramatic shift in Trump’s thinking about the Russia-Ukraine war. After insisting for months that Ukraine was the problem—responsible for the conflict, and reluctant to make peace—the 47th president finally seems to see that Russian President Vladimir Putin is the one who won’t lay down arms. This is a significant breakthrough, and if Trump follows through on the new strategy, it could change the course of the war. But many potential pitfalls lie ahead—in Europe, Washington, and Moscow.

Read more in Washington Monthly.

Kahlenberg and Teixeira for The Liberal Patriot: Bobby Kennedy, Liberal Patriot

Posted on by Max Sherrill

Today, we live in a country deeply divided by politics, race, and, increasingly, social class. Neither political party has been able to command a durable majority. Partisan actors are polarized and deeply dislike—sometimes detest—those on the opposite side of the aisle. Many people do not want their children to marry someone from the opposing political party. In many ways, it feels as though the country is being torn apart.

Paradoxically, at the same time, public opinion polling shows that rank-and-file voters have broad areas of agreement on policies and values. For instance, Americans overwhelmingly agree that equality of opportunity is better than equal outcomes; that America is not perfect, but it is good to be proud of the country; that immigration is beneficial, but border security is critical; and that we need more and better policing rather than an effort to defund law enforcement.

Is it possible to imagine a different politics, one that draws on the best ideas of those who identify as liberals and those who identify as conservatives to build a broad coalition of support?

Keep reading in The Liberal Patriot.

The world child labor count has gone down by more than 100 million since 2000

Posted on by Alex Terr

FACT: The world child labor count has gone down by more than 100 million since 2000.

THE NUMBERS: Child labor by year, worldwide* –

2024 137.6 million
2020 160.0 million
2016 151.6 million
2012 168.0 million
2008 215.2 million
2004 222.3 million
2000 245.5 million

* International Labour Organization estimates, from surveys done 2001-2025.

WHAT THEY MEAN: 

The American mental image of child labor emerges from early 20th-century social reform: Progressive Era photographs of wan children in coal mines and textile mills; factory-focused state government programs in the 1910s; national laws drawn up by Frances Perkins’ Department of Labor in the 1930s. For those looking abroad, the emphasis has been similar: factories, physical goods, supply chains, and children. International Labour Organization research, though, suggests that this is a relatively small share of modern-day child labor. Their most recent worldwide estimate, released on June 11, finds child labor mainly rural, concentrated in very poor countries, and steadily falling, especially in Asia.

As a point of departure, the ILO defines “child labor” as follows:

“[W]ork that is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful to children [aged 5 to 17]; and/or interferes with their schooling by: depriving them of the opportunity to attend school; obliging them to leave school prematurely; or requiring them to attempt to combine school attendance with excessively long and heavy work.”

ILO statisticians have been publishing periodic in-depth analyses of child labor every four years or so since 2002. Their reports include worldwide estimates; the regions in which child labor is most common and those in which it is rarest; change over time; and the “economic sectors” in which most child and teenager laborers work.

Their first report, for the year 2000, found 245.5 million boys and girls (one in six of that year’s 1.53 billion children) doing some form of child labor. The most recent, out in June, estimated 138 million child laborers among 1.90 billion children. Accepting some margin of error, the ILO surveys thus show the worldwide child rate falling by half in a generation — from 16.0% to 7.8% of all boys and girls — and the actual number of child laborers down by 108 million.  Three basic points from these reports, then a thought on the American role:

1. Child labor rates closely track poverty rates. The world’s 26 poorest countries, with about 8% of the world population, are home to 42% of all child laborers: 57.7 million, one in four (23.5%) of these countries’ 245 million children. Child labor rates in high-income countries — the United States and Canada, western Europe, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand — average 0.7%, with a total of 1.6 million child laborers. In between these poles, rates are 3.6% in upper-middle-income countries and 7.5% in lower-middle-income countries.

2. Child labor is mostly rural. The 2025 report finds 61% of child laborers — about 84 million boys and girls — in agriculture, mostly in small family farms and enterprises.  This is often hazardous: per the ILO, child labor in agriculture often involves “exposure to sharp tools (machetes) and dangerous machinery (tractors), risk of snakebites and injuries from other animals, exposure to extreme environmental conditions, and exposure to agrochemicals including inorganic fertilizers and pesticides.” Another 27% of child laborers, 37 million, are in simple urban services such as house-cleaning, food delivery, and shops. The remaining 13%, or 18 million, are in “industry” — that is, on construction sites, in mines, and in factories. Industry work, then, is a relatively small share of all child labor, but appears especially dangerous: 60% of “industry” child labor (meaning 11 million children) is in ‘hazardous’ work, as opposed to 30% in agriculture and 48% in services.

3. Child labor has fallen fastest in Asia. Since the ILO’s first report a quarter-century ago, Asia-Pacific countries — economically growing fast, and demographically rapidly urbanizing — have cut child labor counts from 127 million to 27 million, and to a “rate” of 3.1%. The data:

2024   27 million
2012   77 million
2000 127 million

In Latin America and the Caribbean likewise, the ILO’s estimates of child labor have dropped from 17.4 million in 2000 to 7.4 million in 2024, though the ‘rate’ is somewhat higher than Asia’s at 5.5%. (Or, adding the U.S., Canada, and Greenland to get the “western hemisphere,” 3.9%, which still leaves Asia’s child labor rate the world’s lowest.)  The Arab world and the ILO’s “Europe and Central Asia” region are at 5.8% and 5.6%. Child labor is now concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa (relatively more ‘rural’ than other regions, and with 20 of the world’s 25 ‘low-income countries’). which is home to 87 million child laborers or nearly two-thirds of the worldwide total. Africa’s pattern of child labor mirrors the worldwide “sectoral” pattern, except more intensely: 70% of African child workers are on farms, and only 8% in “industry.”

How to respond? In principle, ILO’s data suggests that urbanization, economic development, and some focused government policies, have sharply reduced child labor over the last generation, especially in Asia; and that child labor is least common, but especially dangerous, in ‘industry’.  With this as the backdrop, U.S. policies, usually focused on child labor in industry (or manufacturing specifically, or international “supply chains”) rather than in agriculture and services, can be criticized as targeting a relatively small part of the child labor phenomenon, but also defended as focused on especially high-risk work.

Debating whether this is still the right approach would be interesting. But unfortunately such an argument would likely miss the point, since current policies suggest that the U.S. won’t be much involved at all in next-generation efforts to reduce child labor.

The Trump administration’s rejection of open-market trade policies, and its attempt to abolish almost all development aid, mean that for the next three years (barring some very sharp turnaround), the U.S. will contribute little to the larger economic trends reducing child labor worldwide. More targeted American work on the most dangerous and worst forms of child labor may also be ending. Having stopped all Labor Department child labor and forced labor projects this spring, the administration hopes to abolish the $91 million U.S. contribution to the ILO, cut its International Labor Affairs Bureau — the group which handles these issues — by 40% (from $113.1 million to $70.2 million, and from 138 to 112 people), and shift ILAB’s remaining work away from humanitarian projects to “ensuring that American workers and businesses benefit from the Administration’s trade agenda by counteracting labor practices overseas that undermine American competitiveness.”

So, a sad U.S. note set against a picture of steady and impressive progress over the past generation. Americans can do better than this.

FURTHER READING

The ILO’s June 2025 report on worldwide child labor.

More from ILO:

Archives: The ILO reports from 2001, 2006, 2010, 2013, 2017, and 2021.

Lessons from reducing child labor through education policies in low-income countries.

And a look at child labor in agriculture.

U.S. policy now:

The Trump administration proposes cutting ILAB by 40% and “refocusing” its work on trade competition. (See under “Departmental Management”, on page 21).

… and to cut U.S. contributions to the International Labor Organization from $91 million to zero (pg. 96).

Not over yet: House Democrats hope to protect ILAB work.

U.S. policy then:

Child labor reports from the Labor Department’s International Labor Affairs Bureau (ILAB):  https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/resources/reports/child-labor

President Clinton oversees the 1999 negotiation and ratification of the ILO Convention on the Worst Forms of Child Labor.

From the Biden/Harris administration, then-Secretary of Labor Martin Walsh at the ILO’s 2021 conference.

… and Tom Vilsack’s USDA on addressing rural child labor at home.

And the long look back:

The National Archives reprints Lewis Hine’s classic photographs of child labor in early 20th-century American streets, mines, and factories.

Smithsonian Magazine looks back on Frances Perkins.

And Economic History has data on the decline of child labor in the U.S. after the passage of state child labor laws in the 1910s and the national Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938.

ABOUT ED

Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.

Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.

Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.

Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.

Read the full email and sign up for the Trade Fact of the Week.

Kahlenberg for NPR’s Attribution with Bob McKinnon: Class Matters

Posted on by Max Sherrill

Richard D. Kahlenberg is an education and housing policy researcher, writer, consultant, and speaker. He is also Director of Housing Policy and Director of the American Identity Project at the Progressive Policy Institute. The author or editor of 19 books, his latest is Class Matters: The Fight to Get Beyond Race Preferences, Reduce Inequality, and Build Real Diversity at America’s Colleges. This was a deep and challenging conversation about class, race, higher education, affirmative action and social mobility.

Listen to the full episode.

Guenther for The Hill: Houston, We Have a Problem: Scrapping the Space Station Harms the U.S.

Posted on by Alex Terr

American astronauts have been in low-Earth orbit aboard the International Space Station for nearly a quarter century.

Their continuous presence in space has led to innovations such as cochlear implants that help deaf people hear, technology that makes our phone cameras sharper, better water filtration and so much more that benefits us back here on Earth.

Unfortunately, President Trump’s budget effectively decommissions the space station, despite years of potential usefulness still ahead.

Read more in The Hill.

Manno for Forbes: Prudence Is A Gateway Virtue For K-12 Education

Posted on by Alex Terr

“We need to offer the coming generations an education in morals as rigorous as their technical and career education,” writes political and cultural commentator David Brooks in The Atlantic. What might be the foundation for the main elements of this rigorous education in morals?

As I thought about this question, I kept returning to two of my parents go to maxims, directed to me—and my siblings—on a regular basis. They offered me a springboard to answer this question.

The first maxim was, “Use your common sense.” The second maxim, meant to reinforce the first, was one of the worst things they could say about someone: “That person doesn’t have any common sense.”

As a young person, I was attracted to the simplicity of these maxims, though not always sure how to apply them as I navigated my way around Collinwood, our Italian-American neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio. They have been with me for over 70 years, shaping my perspective on life.

Read more in Forbes.